Wednesday, January 23, 2008

I'm in love. L.U.V. I saw a preview screening of a new American film called Juno on Monday, which I think anyone who likes my books will adore.

It's the story of 16-year-old Juno McDuff, who gets up the duff to her orange TicTac addicted boyfriend and follows the story of what happnes next. This is why I loved it:

1. Juno is a snarky, moody, too cool for skool, but dorky girl with a hamburger phone.

2. The film doesn't send out a message that sex is bad, OMG!, and let that be a lesson to you. You get to make up your own mind.

3. Juno has a little sister called Liberty Belle who has the funniest Munchkin face I've ever seen.

4. Juno's boyfriend, Bleeker, is just as inarticulate and wussy as most 16 year old boys are.

5. It has the best sound track, including my third favourite Belle & Sebastian song (Expectations) and the good bits of The Moldy Peaches - their quieter, more whimsical stuff not the songs where they're just being silly.

6. You'll see it again and again and you'll memorise your favourite lines. At the moment I'm quoting, "I need to know that it's possible that two people can stay happy together forever."

7. It's got me really excited about the book I'm writing and about being brave and writing in a way that's different from other writers. My books have been rejected by TV and film peeps for "not being filmic enough" so I'm heartened that there are still people around who realise we don't necessarily want to see perfect, beautiful people messing up in a perfect, beautiful way on our screens.

8. Juno was so good that even the woman sitting three rows across who must have been a semi-finalist in the National Bag Rustling And Eating Really Noisy Snacks Awards didn't annoy me that much.

9. It has Jennifer Garner in it. And I have a huge girl crush on Jennifer Garner in this completely irrational, I'll-see-anything-that-she's-in-even-if-it's-really-crap way.

10. At the end I even squeezed out a few tears and I can't remember the last time a film made me cry.

So, Juno comes out on February 8th, so cancel all your other plans and go and see it. Then let me know why YOU loved it too!

Tuesday, January 01, 2008

Happy New Year to one and all! I am feeling a little bit fragile this morning. Except it isn't actually morning because that was over and done with while I was still sleeping. Oh dear!

Anyway, my random Chrismukkah gift-giving continues with a bit that got cut out of the final draft of Let's Get Lost, like a deleted scene friom a DVD if you will. I tend to overwrite then find myself having to cut thousands and thousands of words from my final drafts. Alas my files for LGL are really disorganised and this is all I could find. It's the bit where Isabel has been snogging one of those chavvy boys in the park. And it's completely unedited and it a very clunky past tense. Why did I do that?!

CUT SCENE FROM LET'S GET LOST

Rob really had been the best of a truly bad bunch. At least he'd hit puberty. We'd drunk these two super-sized bottles of cider quickly enough to qualify for the world record before Rob had dragged me off in the direction of the hut behind the Crown Bowling Green. He'd fancied himself quite the raconteur and regaled me with all these stories about how he could break into a car in five seconds and steal the stereo and the sub woofers, whatever the hell they were, before anyone realised. He was quite the charming conversationalist.

"People are real twats," he'd sniffed. "Most of the time they leave the doors unlocked."

"You don't say."

"Yeah. I've never really talked to a posh bird before."

I arched one of my eyebrows. "And how's it working out for you?"

"Dunno," he'd said, after a minute's thought. "So you gonna let me feel you up then?"

Out of the corner of my eye, I'd caught a flash of pink and I knew Nancy was in the vicinity already to report back. "C'mon, then," I'd sighed. "You can kiss me if you like."

After Rob had thoroughly rinsed my mouth out with his tongue for a good few minutes while I carefully manoeuvred him out of the line of fire, I'd had enough. Then he'd mauled my tits like he was trying to tune in one of those purloined car stereos and I'd had more than I could stand.

I'd gently extricated myself from his octopus-like embrace and firmly removed the paw that was clamped around my left buttock.

"What did you do that for?" Rob had asked, trying to worm his leg between mine while I thrust my head back to evade any more spit.

"Don't get me wrong, this has been real and stuff but I have to go," I'd said very pleasantly given the extreme mauling I'd just suffered. "Maybe I'll see you around."

He'd reached for me again as I'd adroitly side-stepped out of the path of his questing hands. "You're tight, you know that," he'd told me furiously.

"Gosh, thanks awfully for enlightening me." He didn't seem to be getting the message that I'd rather have my skin removed from my body with a rusty potato peeler than kiss him again. He'd kept lurching towards me with his lips puckered and Jesus, those hands… They should have had a government health warning tattooed across the knuckles.

"You know you want to," he'd cajoled, grabbing my wrists and it's so annoying that even the weediest boy can overpower me. But even weedy boys don't have nails as sharp as mine or know how to use them.

He gave a girly squeak when I dug them into the back of his hands and finally let me go. "Sorry about that," I'd chirped. "Did I mention that I was a Mormon?"

And then I turned and ran while he was still scrolling through the empty files where his brain should be to understand what I was saying.

This is the official blog of Sarra Manning, writer of Guitar Girl, Pretty Things, Let's Get Lost. the Fashionistas series, Nobody's Girl and the Diary Of A Crush trilogy. Also, Unsticky, Sarra's first novel for grown-up girls.
This blog will have regular postings from Sarra, answers to your questions, sneak previews of her forthcoming projects, competitions and a lot of ranting and raving about her current obsessions from Glee to obscure female Swedish singers and everything in between.

Le temps sont durs pour le rêveurs...

I write tawdry teen fiction and articles about fashion, celebrity and zeitgeisty trends. I wear Old Navy, Dorothy Perkins and Marc Jacobs. I was born 50 years too late and 50 years too soon. I have a rich, inner life. I live in London and on my wits. And I'm softer than my face would suggest...
But there are some things you need to know about me:
1. There will never be any more books in the Diary Of A Crush trilogy. READ THE DIARY OF A CRUSH LABELS BELOW TO FIND OUT WHY!
2. I can't reply to your messages if you don't have an active blogspot so I can leave comments.
3. My blog has all my latest news, including book releases. Also there are writing tips ALSO LABELLED BELOW!
4. If you're doing a book report, then Google is your friend. Just search my name. On the first page of your search, you will find pretty much everything you need.
Hope I don't sound too cranky, but as well as the book-writing, I'm a jobbing journalist and I hate to have a backlog of unanswered emails.